


Deathless Aphrodite

by Glinda



Series: Sappho Quotes Prompt Table [4]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Mutually Unrequited, Teacher-Student Relationship, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-08-10 06:22:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7833715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Glinda/pseuds/Glinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Holtzmann learned a great deal from her mentor, but there are things that she needs to learn that Rebecca cannot teach her. It's uncertain which of them that knowledge is harder on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt #1 Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind 
> 
> Not officially a fill for my table as the story grew arms and legs and got too long for the challenge.

_Come to me now: loose me from hard_  
_care and all my heart longs_  
_to accomplish, accomplish. You_  
_be my ally_. - Sappho

The first time Jillian met a true kindred spirit, she was nineteen and she didn’t realise it. Doctor Gorin swept into their classroom like a force of nature. Outfit immaculate and hair a disaster. She opened Jillian’s eyes to a whole other world of science and challenged her in a thousand little ways in every single class. And the way Dr Gorin’s eyes lit up when Jillian pushed back and asked a question or threw out an interesting concept or challenge, stirred something messy and complex in Jillian’s closely guarded heart. 

Dr Gorin moves with utter precision and control, carefully controlled and with the most perfect posture Jillian’s ever seen. Her spine aches with sympathy at the sight of her. Jillian admires her greatly, but that admiration gains something softer while she’s working on her Masters dissertation, when Dr Gorin becomes her advisor. She’s working on her doctoral proposal and while there are a couple of possible candidates within the department, she desperately wants to work under her hero and equally doesn’t want her mentor to know how much she wants that. They walk into Dr Gorin’s office mid-discussion when Dr Gorin shrugs off her blazer and freezes halfway through the process, apparently stuck.

“Throw your back out doing something embarrassing?” Jillian asks, keeping her tone light as she eases the blazer off one shoulder. 

Given how tense Dr Gorin is she suspects the truth is either super embarrassing or fairly traumatic. 

“Lab accident. Years ago.” Dr Gorin says stiffly. “A colleague who couldn’t leave well enough alone.”

“Safety lights are for dudes,” Jillian affirms quietly. This close she can see the outline of some kind of back brace – mostly obscured by her waistcoat - through the thin material of her blouse.

“And another woman wouldn’t have needed a safety light to tell them not to interfere with someone else’s experiments. “ Dr Gorin agrees. “He escaped with mild concussion but I…well when you’ve been told you might never walk again, not being able to raise your right hand above shoulder height without pain feels like such a small inconvenience.”

Which explains her hair. A statement that Jillian doesn’t entirely realise she’s made aloud until she notices the look of fond amusement on Dr Gorin’s face. She’s tongue-tied for a moment, but it doesn’t matter as Dr Gorin changes the subject abruptly. 

“Holtzmann, is it entirely necessary for you to be applying to work under Dr Spengler? Or Dr Stantz for that matter?”

“I’m supposed to have backups, in case you say no.” Jillian admits awkwardly.

“They won’t appreciate you and they don’t deserve you. And why on earth would you think I’d say no?” Dr Gorin exclaims.

Jillian shrugs awkwardly, “I’m aware I’m not the easiest of people to work with.”

“Neither am I,” says Dr Gorin dismissively, “come and be brilliant and anti-social with me.”

“I’m in.” 

~

By the time she’s writing her doctoral thesis, they’re almost friends and Jillian’s massive crush has settled into the quiet contentment of unrequited adoration. The companionship of their working relationship along with the joy of spending most days in the company of such a brilliant mind, and being treated as an equal by such a mind is almost enough for her. 

Her experiments are noisy but in a sudden lull she becomes aware of a conversation taking place in the adjoining room.

“Your shoulder’s bothering you again?” 

“It’s always worse in the Fall, the damp gets in,” Rebecca admits. 

“I thought it was better, I never see you with your hair down anymore, and even when it is it’s never…” the other woman trails off awkwardly.

“Messy?” asks Rebecca wryly. “No. You weren’t the only one who noticed my hair. Jillian figured it out years ago and then we were at a conference and it really needed to be up and she offered to do it for me. It was…nice. Soothing. The last time someone other than the hairdresser brushed my hair for me was high school, I’d forgotten how good it felt. And once I’d let her do it once, it was such a little thing to let her do it again. She…worries. She cares an awful lot under that surface of hers. And really it was such a small concession…I can give her so little else.”

“Come now Rebecca, young Holtzmann has come on in leaps and bounds since you took her under your wing.” The other woman’s tone and manner is familiar, clearly someone that her mentor is close to, but Jillian cannot place the voice at all. “Both academically and personally, she’s much less…”

“Oh I know I’ve taught her a lot. But I’m rapidly running out of things to teach her, which is right and proper at this stage in her academic career. She needs to fly the nest and find new challenges. But part of me wants to keep her here where she’ll be safe, where no one else will hurt her. And that can only hurt her more in the long run, there are things that she needs to learn that I can’t teach her. I wouldn’t know how.” Rebecca confesses.

“Oh…Oh I see what you mean. Yes that does make sense. For what it’s worth I’m sorry, for you both. And I won’t say anything about the hair thing. It’s a small kindness, but you’re right, other people wouldn’t understand.” 

“Thank you, I’d appreciate that.”

~  
Later, Jillian, dares to wander through to her mentor’s part of the lab, where she’s sitting utterly still at her desk. There are documents and reports strewn everywhere around her which is par for the norm, but what is unusual is that Rebecca is staring intently at the large hairclip that normally holds up her hair. 

“How much of that did you hear, earlier,” Rebecca asks, not looking up. 

“Enough, I think,” Jillian tells her honestly. There’s a long and uncharacteristic silence from her mentor, which eventually Jillian feels the need to break. “You know I would…if you asked…anything you wanted…”

“I know. Which is why I could never ask. _Will_ never ask that of you. You are one of the most brilliant minds I’ve ever encountered and I’m immensely proud of the work we’ve done together. I respect you too much to…exploit your trust like that. And you know, I suspect, as well as I do that there are worse things in life than loneliness. You deserve better than that, Jillian.” 

“I suspect one day, I’ll appreciate that more than I can imagine right now,” she confesses, “I’ll probably respect you a great deal more than I might otherwise but that doesn’t mean…right now.”

“No. I don’t imagine its much comfort right now. I’ll understand if you want some time away from the lab. There’s a conference in Massachusetts in a few weeks that might be of interest to you,” Rebecca offers, “take a road trip, hear some talks, tell me all about how wrong they are when you get back. It might even do us both good.”

“I think…you might be right about that,” Jillian acknowledges, fiddling with the abandoned hair clip, “in the meantime…”

“Yes,” Rebecca says with a wry smile, “I’d very much like you to put my hair back up for me.”

In reality, Jillian actually takes Rebecca’s hair down first, brushing it slowly and carefully, watching the tension slowly release from her mentor’s shoulders. She pays careful attention to every sensation involved in the process. It may not be the last time she gets to do this, but in case it is – now that they’ve both been forced to confront the truth that’s always lurked beneath the action, how can they pretend otherwise - she’s determined to savour every moment of it. 

Rebecca’s right, there are far worse things in life than loneliness, but wrapped up in the sensations and intimacy of pinning up Rebecca’s hair, Jillian is hard pushed to imagine what they might be.


	2. Release me from Care

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jillian isn't her student anymore, but some things haven't changed between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my actual fill for the prompt #1 Deathless Aphrodite of the spangled mind
> 
> It actually makes a nice little coda for the original story if you happen to want that, so I've added it as an extra chapter here.

Rebecca sits across the table from Jillian, listening to her enthuse about her research, about the challenges of engineering a physical solution to an almost intangible problem. The wine and the science loosens their tongues and unwinds their inhibitions the way they always do, but there’s something different tonight. There’s a different vibe to their academic sparring, as though the flirtation that has always lain underneath it is slowly pushing its way to surface. Refusing to be denied and supressed any longer.

She doesn’t mean to kiss Jillian. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to. That she hasn’t wanted to for many a year. Hasn’t spent a good percentage of the time she’s known her younger colleague resolutely refusing to think about how much she’d like to kiss her. Has focused on how much it would have been a betrayal of Jillian’s trust and admiration to do so. 

But Jillian isn’t her student any more. Hasn’t been for more than a decade. She’s a grown woman now, with friends and colleagues and work that isn’t related to Rebecca in the slightest. She doesn’t need Rebecca any more. But she definitely still wants her. Rebecca doesn’t doubt that, not in the way Jillian surges back into the kiss she initiates, nor in the way she murmurs ‘finally’ into Rebecca’s skin as she kisses her way down Rebecca’s throat. 

The spangled, brilliant mind of her former protégée is too much to resist suddenly, and Rebecca lets herself go. Lays down her cares for a while and lets herself exist in the moment with Jillian, lets herself be consumed with the joy and passion of their connection. 

It’s far less scary than she has always feared. Jillian is tender and without shame as she lays Rebecca down, deathless like some forgotten Sumerian goddess.


End file.
